SPECTACULAR BLAZE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 January 1940, Page 7

SPECTACULAR BLAZE

BIG FIRE IN WELLINGTON HOPE GIBBONS’ BUILDING DAMAGED. LOSS ESTIMATED AT £30.000. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. For the fourth time within 12 months damage running into thousands of pounds was caused in Wellington by fire, when the rear block of Hope Gibbons’s building in Dixon Street was seriously damaged by an outbreak on Saturday night. Flames leaping many feet into the air from the top of the five-story building made a spectacular sight against the dark storm clouds, and a crowd of several thousand soon gathered to watch the blaze destroy the fourth and fifth floors. Intense heat, caused by burning rubber, packing, and other material, made the work of the Fire Brigade extremely difficult, but soon after 9 p.m., a little more than an hour after the fire began, it had the flames under control.

The stock of cycle equipment which Hope Gibbons. Ltd., had stored on the fifth floor was probably the biggest in New Zealand and was completely destroyed. As there has been a shortage of cycle equipment for some time, this further depletion of stocks is likely to be serious. Mr A. R. Thomas, general manager of Hope Gibbons, Ltd., said that the damage to the stock on the fifth floor and to the building would amount to about £30,000, as nearly as he could estimate. The next biggest sufferer from the fire was the Welsback Light Co., on the fourth floor, which had all its stock of electrical and other equipment destroyed. Stock owned by tailoring firms on the third and second floors was damaged by water. Water soaked through records which the Labour Department had on the second floor.

The following are the occupiers of the building:—Ground and first floor. Hope Gibbons, Ltd., wholesale merchants: second floor. Leo Blake, Ltd., clothing manufacturers, and Labour Department; third floor, Frank Lee, tailor; fourth floor, Welsbach Light Company of Australasia, Ltd; fifth floor, Hope Gibbons, Ltd.